Using a survey, interviews, and reflections by the teaching-research team, we explored the effects of almost a decade of experimentation, inspired by Freire's pedagogy for liberation, which applied participatory action research in engineering courses and in cities to develop professionals who are more committed to sustainability and more able to…

This powerful resource is for researchers and educational leaders who are interested in understanding and applying research methods that emphasize youth voice. The authors argue that most educational research either omits critical understandings of youth or, even worse, presents inaccuracies due to faulty techniques. Researching how youth…

Education researchers use surveys widely. Yet, critics question respondents' ability to provide high-quality responses. As schools increasingly use student surveys to drive local policy making, respondents' (lack of) motivation to provide quality responses may threaten the wisdom of using questionnaires for data-based decision making. To better…

The author, having drawn examples from her doctoral study, describes how a thematic analysis approach was employed to interpret raw data in her doctoral study which explored the impacts of a high-stakes test on students and parents in Nepal. As the main purpose of this paper is to provide some guidelines for English language teaching (ELT)…

The increasingly widespread use of social software (e.g., Wikis, Google Docs) in second language (L2) settings has brought a renewed attention to collaborative writing. Although the current methodological approaches to examining collaborative writing are valuable to understand L2 students' interactional patterns or perceived experiences, they can…

Filipino Americans are one of the largest immigrant groups in the United States and the second largest Asian American/Pacific Islander ethnic group. However, there is little research focusing on the unique experiences of this group, particularly in higher education. This paper presents a qualitative exploration of the experiences of Filipino…

The aim of this article is to identify concepts and methods for studying collaboration in context. The article presents a two-level methodology designed to combine individual and group-level perspectives for the evaluation of collaborative knowledge construction in student groups. The group-level analysis is focused on the students' negotiation…

This investigation of the relationship between elementary school students and a videodisc system in an educational environment used a social interaction analysis paradigm to identify meaningful patterns of social behavior and to examine whether: (1) such patterns indicate acceptance of or resistance to the technology; (2) students exhibit more…

Describes a study of Israeli ninth graders who answered a questionnaire on scientific attitudes, curiosity, and computer studies, to determine whether computers have an effect on development of student attitudes toward science by encouraging students' curiosity levels. Results indicate computers provide an opportunity to develop curiosity, thus…

Students' conceptions and beliefs about learning are constructs that have been proposed in two independent lines of research, phenomenographic and metacognitive, and analysed using qualitative and quantitative methodologies, respectively. The present research examines and integrates in a single study both constructs and methodologies. Data were…

Two methods of researching second language learning are described, analyzed, and compared: student diaries giving a first-person account of the second language learning experience; and participant observation, in which the observer is in the language learning situation recording in descriptive terms all possible data about the situation.…

This study investigated college students' use of and attitudes toward traditional and nontraditional news media, and the role of cable news network (CNN) and its integration into evolving news consumption patterns. Results indicate later college years are associated with heavier consumption. CNN viewers are heavier users of traditional media.…

This study was conducted to determine effects of highlight and question placement in computer assisted instruction modules on untrained and trained objective test scores and attitudes of higher education students. Question and highlight use was superior to straight text; questions were superior for increasing untrained scores, but students…

Describes a study of on-campus and external university students' perceptions of factors influencing external studies. Students identified family, job, and life circumstances as major influences; self-reliance and finances as advantages; limited library access as a disadvantage; and a preference for on-campus study or a combination of both.…

This paper examines the role of research methods courses. The paper offers several "facts" concerning such courses and considers four myths and their role in the teaching of research courses in communication. Among the suspect "facts" cited in the paper are that today's students are both products and producers of an…